The Story Before the Story is a straight forward presentation, which provides the reader of Scripture a simple but compelling introduction to reading Scripture as a story. This book interacts with four important concepts: foundationalism, fragmentation, story, and kingdom. Reading with a foundationalism concept without knowing it leads to a reduction of the text into principles, which produces patchwork followers of Jesus. The author believes that reading fragmentively produces fragmented lives in the followers of Jesus. Reading Scripture as a story is the antidote to foundationalism and fragmentation. Kingdom theology is the glue for the reader that holds the story together. This book is an invitation to read Scripture with both eyes open.

googling God’s Will: Why Keep Searching For It When It’s Not Lost?
Winn Griffin
Harmon Press (January 7, 2011)

Years ago when I was first told that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life I believed it. I still do. But in recent years I have come to the conclusion that His plan for my life is not as elusive as I once thought. Dr. Winn Griffin, in his succinct little book, Googling God’s Will, agrees. While acknowledging an overabundance of books and websites devoted to the subject of seeking God’s will, he feels the need to offer his own insightful view using contemporary metaphors like Google, GPS systems, and power steering in an attempt to remove what he considers unnecessary barriers that muddy the water and prevent us from resting in God’s will.

Although I would have never phrased it this way, I used to suspect that God was playing some sort of cosmic hide-and-seek game with me. It was like he had this perfect will for my life but wasn’t about to tell me what it was, preferring to hide it from me, forcing me to search for it by trial-but-mostly-error fashion. Some days I would think I was warm but mostly I felt cold. I would wonder why it was so hard to know what God expected from me. These days that seems like a silly notion, and the way I have just phrased it to you it probably sounds silly to you, too. So, if it is silly, why do so many of us practice “seeking” God’s will in that way?

A particular insight Dr. Griffin helped with is that the worldview of the Bible (Middle Eastern) and ours (Western Enlightenment) are markedly different. If we are to understand the Bible’s intended message, we need to understand the context in which it was written. For example, one of the marks of “Enlightened” thinking is its emphasis on individualism, a concept that would have seemed strange to the Middle Eastern mind that thought more in terms of community than individuality, and pronouns we often read as personal are, in fact, collective. So, when we read “you” in the Bible it often, if not usually, means “you all.” Griffin writes, “When it comes to God’s will, we are often looking for answers in all the wrong places. We [Westerners] want to know what God’s will is for our individual life. What we often get as an answer by our teachers is a bandage, but the sore never heals, because we have never treated the root cause of our problem. God appears to act and guide from a community base than an individual base.… God’s will can be as simple as understanding our need for belonging … It may be said that God’s will for us is to be intimate with him … for the sake of others.”

Dr. Griffin’s book, though concise (just 100 pages), is one of those books that takes a while to read. It’s like a nutrient rich meal, a little goes a long way—it takes time to digest. But for me that is the mark of a really good book.

Winn loves spending time with his family, collecting baseball cards, watching movies, eating banana sandwiches (now with Splenda), traveling, reading mystery stories, and watching sports. He has received Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and two Doctor of Ministry degrees: the first was in Biblical Studies; the second at George Fox University, Portland, OR, in Leadership in the Emerging Culture. He serves as an adjunct professor at Bakke Graduate University, Seattle, WA, and he is the author of God’s EPIC Adventure: Changing the Culture by the Story We Live and Tell (Harmon Press: 2007).

In Peter Rollin’s book, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief he posited the concept of a parody of the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) with What Would Judas Do. One has to wonder, if one is given to such things, what you would do if faced with a radical version of your own religion. Of course, our own self-bred piety would quickly jump to the conclusion that we would not do as Judas did. But, not so quick. While Judas had walked with Jesus for his almost ten years of ministry, he apparently grew weary of this new form of belief that was updating if not outright replacing his old form of belief. Judas lived in one of what Phyllis Tickle calls a “hinge” time in history. Nope, not all was well for the Jews with Romans in town, but on the other hand, they did get to go about a pretty normal life. Yep, there were the rebels like the Zealots, who one of his friends Simon had been a part of. But, for the most part, the social and religious cultures were livable. But, Judas became restless and in one final decision, he showed his true colors and reneged on the Kingdom message of Jesus.

It’s easy to ridicule Judas, but remember his world as he knew it was turned upside down. He was asked to change the story that he and his family had lived in for centuries. Those of us living in USAmerica, we live in a story that is profoundly American. While it has been influenced by the Judeo-Christian motif, it is not, nor never has it ever been, Christian. We have lived in a version of Christianity not only influenced by Enlightenment’s Modernity, but also influenced by a different covenant. I like the American covenant, i.e., the Constitution, but it should not be confused with the Jesus Covenant. They are not one and the same. We, like Judas, are being faced with an increasing tension with what we have lived in and what we should be living in. So, what are you going to do? Betray the church as it has come to be, in favor of one that is more radical than it has been for many years. Does radical mean weird? Wouldn’t being truly human be weird in a good way and not in a weird way? If you were Judas, living in the present form of Christianity, what would you do?

In USAmerica, today is voting day. Regardless of who wins, we are again presented with living in an USAmerican cultural story that will either be led one way or another by the upcoming government. Many USAmerican followers of Jesus simply follow and live in that story without asking if there is another story that they should be living into. Many simply believe that the USAmerican story is the Christian story. The hybrid story is so well mixed one can’t tell where the Christian story is and where the USAmerican story is.

It seems to me a good time to review what story we are choosing to live into. So in the few words below, in the tradition of Reader’s Digest and the art of Modernity’s reductionism, here is a synopsis from my book God’s EPIC Adventure (318-319) of the proposed story of God from Scripture.

The drama begins in Act 1 of his play in the Genesis account of creation, “there was a time when God spoke all things into existence.” He created humankind and gave them free run of the most beautiful garden, which was his created world. But, in Act 2, as the crown of the Creator’s creation, humankind made a decision to worship what God had created rather than worshiping the Creator. What God had created perfect, humankind had flawed and the true humanity of the Garden became distorted and their view of God became dimly lit. The missionary God sought his created beings out and banned them from his Garden.

Act 3 continues the story, which is the content of the rest of the Old Testament, by God’s creation of a people whose vocation would be to become the “light of the world” so the pagan societies in which she lived could see what God was really like. Israel’s creation came with four great acts of God. He first delivered/redeemed them from their bondage in Egypt in the great act of the Exodus. He took a group of slaves from the slave market of the day and freed them. The next great act of God for his people was the giving of a national charter, a Covenant, so that they would know what it was like to live out their vocation as the people of God. Next, he made them into a kingdom where there vocation moved from nation to individual, which looked forward to a day in which a new kingdom with a truly human being would inaugurate God’s Kingdom here on earth. In the last scenes of Act 3, we find Israel in Exile and a short return from Exile. She had all but lost her vocation of being God’s “light to the world.” In the physical return from Exile, spiritual return did not occur. The Temple rebuilt did not return to its former glory which produced a conception of life that they were continually living in exile waiting for the one promised by the prophets who would bring them their freedom.

Act 4 tells the story of Jesus who stepped into human history, in the fullness of time. In his ministry, he came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was present in this Present Evil Age. A truly human being, as humans were intended to be, had arrived as God honored his promises to this people. Four different writers tell us four different stories about the events of the life of Jesus. His message: “Repent and Believe!” The first hearers heard him say in this message that they should stop living in their present stories of military means, quietism, or their compromising ways with the present powers and begin living in a different story. He demonstrated for his followers, then and now, in his words what an authentic disciple should be like and demonstrated in his works of healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead what actions his authentic disciples should follow.

Moving into the final act of God’s EPIC Adventure (Act 5, Scene 1-6), we find the creation of the church by the Spirit as God’s new humanity. Like Israel before her, this new community of the Spirit was and is to be the light to the world by the releasing of gracelets given by the Spirit to help followers of Christ accomplish his mission.

We, as Christ-followers, now live in the scene between the sixth scene of the early church and the final scene yet to be written. Out mission is to discover our part in God’s EPIC Adventure and imagine and improvise how we live our part out for his sake, our sake, and the sake of the world. There are some clues about how this grand narrative is going to end, but they are only clues. We are truly God’s new humanity, living as followers of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to be effective agents of the Kingdom in this Present Evil Age.

The traditional Christian view of life is get right with God by saying a sinner’s prayer, then wait for him to rapture you away from this awful, sinful world, or die and go to heaven. Sound familiar? This story has captivated the church and is the story that many, many Christians live in.

There is another story and it is well articulated by Tom Wright in his article from Time Magazine. Go ahead, take a look, which story do you want to live in? It’s your choice.

I echo Tom Wright’s view in my book God’s EPIC Adventure:

If you went to the streets today or within the corridors of the church and asked what Jesus meant by “repent and believe,” you would most likely hear that he meant “Give up your private sins (most likely sexual, alcohol, and drug abuse) by accepting Jesus and gain some “inner peace” by believing a body of dogma and joining the local church at the corner of walk and don’t walk so you can go to heaven when you die.” God’s EPIC Adventure, 187.

AND

With the resurrection of Jesus, God created a new world and sent Jesus’ followers off to announce it to the world. If you go to the resurrection chapters in Luke 24, or in Matthew, or Mark, or John, and say, “What do the evangelists think this stuff means; why are we telling this story?” The answer is not, “Jesus is risen again, therefore, we can go to heaven when we die and be with him.” It’s interesting they never say that, those resurrection chapters. Rather, they say, “Jesus is risen from the dead. Therefore, God’s new creation has begun, and you are commissioned to go off and make it happen.” That’s the emphasis. And it’s a new world of justice and freedom; it’s the exodus world, the return-from-exile world, the world where Jesus already reigns as Lord, it’s the world with good news for all, especially, as in the New Testament, for the poor, 213.

Also see Tom Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Over the last few months (October 21 and December 17), the Barna Research Group has surveyed folks about their belief in several well know Bible stories. In the survey they conducted belief about the following stories were quarried.

Survey respondents were asked if they thought a specific story in the Bible was “literally true, meaning it happened exactly as described in the Bible” or whether they thought the story was “meant to illustrate a principle but is not to be taken literally.” Six renowned Bible stories were then offered to adults for their consideration.

October 21

• The resurrection of Jesus. About 75 percent (75%) of those surveyed believed this story to be literal.
• Daniel in the lion’s den. Almost two-thirds (65%) thought this story to be literally true.
• The parting of the Red Sea. Just a shade less that the Daniel group, sixty-four percent (64%) believed this story actually happening.
• David and Goliath. Sixty-three percent (63%) found this story to be literal.
• Peter walking on water. The percentage of folks who took this to be literal was sixty percent (60%).
• The six days of Creation in Genesis. Those who accept this as literal was also 60%, but the breakdown was interesting. Seventy-three percent (73%) of the sixty percent who believed this story had not attended college, while only thirty-eight percent (38%) who attended college believed the story was literal.

December 17, 2007

• The Virgin Birth. Three our of every four people survived (75%) believed this story to be literally true.
• Turning water into wine. About seventy percent (70%) accepted this story about the event at Cana as having actually occurred.
• The feeding of the 5,000. Two out of three people, sixty-eight percent, (68%) view this story as factually accurate.
• Noah and the flood. The percentage was sixty-four percent.
• Eve and the Serpent. The survey results reads, “In total, 56% of adults believe that the story of the devil, disguised as a serpent and tempting Eve to sin by eating the forbidden fruit, is literally true.” I always find this interesting in that the text of the story nowhere identifies the serpent as Satan. So, it seems in this case, that the fifty-six percent who believed this story, believe it in a way that the story itself does not present. I often ponder how many things we believe about the stories are not really in the stories.
• The Strength of Sampson. Less than fifty percent (50%) believe this to be factually true.

How People Live Stories
Barna concludes from these statistics that Americans struggle with “the concept of truth, the nature of God, and the value of the Bible in personal decision-making.” He also notes that there is a “significant disconnect between faith and practice” and that the Bible has become “a respected but impersonal religious history lesson that stays removed from…life.”

Within modernity, we have presented the Bible in such a fragmented way that it is amazing that anyone believes any of these stories. As Barna points out, believing the stories and applying them is two different things. Maybe the problem is with the process. Usually the text of Scripture is presented and then a suggested “one-size-fits-all” application is given by the presenter. This supposedly is to keep the text from just becoming something one only believes to become something one actually does. The problem is the fragmentation of such an approach. Both a fragmented presentation of isolated verses used in a prooftexting fashion and a presentation of stories independent from their context or shuffled within the context of the books they come from produce a fragmented or quilted follower of Jesus.

What if we tried another approach. What if we stopped trying to apply parts of Scripture to our lives and discovered the Story of Scripture and how as an actor/actress within that story we are to play out our part in his EPIC adventure. How would that change the way in which we present the Story/stories of Scripture?

Reading the text is important. To that end I am preparing a reading program called Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days, using Today’s New International Version’s presentation of the text in The Books of the Bible™ as the text to read.

Go to Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days for more information.

Here’s a short video clip of Brian McLaren asking me a question about God’s EPIC Adventure. Enjoy.